Report: Dodgers’ 2015 payroll is an MLB-high $262.6 million.

According to Yahoo! Sports, the Dodgers’ 2015 payroll projects to be an MLB-high $262.6 million. That includes players who are unsigned and eligible for salary arbitration, and players with 0-3 years’ service time who have not yet reached agreement on a 2015 contract.

The $262.6 million an estimate. So is the $275.2 million we estimated recently using a different methodology ($10 million combined for all 0-3 players, rather than $500,000 per player). As with all estimates, take each of those numbers with a grain of salt. Gather enough grains together, and you get a sense for the bigger picture.

The bigger picture is that the Dodgers are still baseball’s biggest spenders. From the Yahoo! piece:

Nearly two-thirds of the teams in baseball could start the season with $100 million-plus payrolls, with the Dodgers, Yankees ($210.9 million) and Red Sox ($180.5 million) all certain to exceed the $189 million luxury-tax threshold. Rounding out the top five payrolls are Detroit ($168.8 million) and World Series champion San Francisco ($160.7 million).

The biggest salary jump comes in Seattle, where the Mariners’ offensive additions bumped their payroll to an estimated $122.5 million, more than $30 million ahead of 2014. The Dodgers are second at $27.3 million, though in reality they’ll actually be spending less on players in their uniform this year: they’re paying a combined $37.5 million to cover the salaries of the released Brian Wilson and the traded Matt Kemp and Dan Haren.

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About J.P. Hoornstra

J.P. Hoornstra covers the Dodgers, Angels and Major League Baseball for the Orange County Register, Los Angeles Daily News, Long Beach Press-Telegram, Torrance Daily Breeze, San Gabriel Valley Tribune, Pasadena Star-News, San Bernardino Sun, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin, Whittier Daily News and Redlands Daily Facts. Before taking the beat in 2012, J.P. covered the NHL for four years. UCLA gave him a degree once upon a time; when he graduated on schedule, he missed getting Arnold Schwarzenegger's autograph on his diploma by five months.